Hi Zuzolek,
As you are learning, there are a lot of choices when it comes to Divemaster and Instructor internships, particularly in Asia. The warm water, the tropical climate and the low prices make Asia, and in particular Thailand, terrific and affordable places to do your training.
If you're looking at doing an internship that runs several months, such as our as Aquanauts, you really need not be concenred with how many dives you have when you start. We offer unlimited diving so you can dive 7 days a week if you like. By the end of three months (the standard length of our Open Water to Divemaster internship), you'll log 150+ dives. And, as another poster noted, Pattaya's diving can be, let's say, challenging. It's definately the best conditions in the world, but they are excellent for training. You truly will leave here a skilled compass navigator and get lots of different scenarios to test your rescue diver, search & recovery, etc. skills.
As for where to go, obviously I'm biased. But I do think that if you look hard at the various internship programs out there, you'll find Aquanauts offers the most all-inclusive, best quality and value package out there. We provide all all your courses, materials and certification fees, full private accommodations, a full set of professional grade equipment from Scubapro, Mares or Aqualung (your choice), our "Divemaster Skills Enhancement Course," which is a suite of 8 additional courses you get at no additional charge by simply booking early, National Geographic Diver certification, unlimited diving and the industry's best job placement.
Most importantly, you training in a small group environemtn. No class will be larger than 4 people and most times you get 1-on-1 instruction. And our small size, Persoanlzied Training and job placement service are probably the main things that sets us apart Mermaid's (recommended earlier), and you get all of that at a price that is as much as $1,100 less expensive!
Regarding job placement, Aquanauts is the only dive center on the planet to operate a separately incorporated, full-time Scuba Diving Jobs placement agency called Jobs4Divers. We operate the Jobs4Divers.com website and we also have a staff on full-time employment counselors right here in town. Right now there are 750 jobs listed on Jobs4Divers, which is about 15 times more than DiversJobs.com, and more than all the other dive job sites combined. As an Aquanauts intern, you get access to all those jobs exclusively for the first two days the ads are posted. We also have built an offline database of 6,500 dive centers worldwide that we can query for jobs not yet listed on the website.
Our small group ennvironment, job placement, our experienced staff led by 2 in-house Course Directors, and the complete choice and value of our packages make Aquanauts the program to beat. You can have a closer look at it at DivingInstructorTraining.com.
